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But if in the soul thing follows thing, if there is earlier
and later in its productions, if it engenders or creates in time,
then it must be looking towards the future; and if towards the
future, then towards the past as well?
No: prior and past are in the things its produces; in itself
nothing is past; all, as we have said, is one simultaneous
grouping of Reason-Principles. In the engendered, dissimilarity
is not compatible with unity, though in the Reason-Principles
supporting the engendered such unity of dissimilars does occur-
hand and foot are in unity in the Reason-Principle [of man], but
apart in the realm of sense. Of course, even in that ideal realm
there is apartness, but in a characteristic mode, just as in a
mode, there is priority.
Now, apartness may be explained as simply differentiation: but
how account for priority unless on the assumption of some
ordering principle arranging from above, and in that disposal
necessarily affirming a serial order?
There must be such a principle, or all would exist
simultaneously; but the indicated conclusion does not follow
unless order and ordering principle are distinct; if the ordering
principle is Primal Order, there is no such affirmation of
series; there is simply making, the making of this thing after
that thing. The affirmation would imply that the ordering
principle looks away towards Order and therefore is not, itself,
Order.
But how are Order and this orderer one and the same?
Because the ordering principle is no conjoint of matter and idea
but is soul, pure idea, the power and energy second only to the
Intellectual-Principle: and because the succession is a fact of
the things themselves, inhibited as they are from this
comprehensive unity. The ordering soul remains august, a circle,
as we may figure it, in complete adaptation to its centre,
widening outward, but fast upon it still, an outspreading without
interval.
The total scheme may be summarized in the illustration of The
Good as a centre, the Intellectual-Principle as an unmoving
circle, the Soul as a circle in motion, its moving being its
aspiration: the Intellectual-Principle possesses and has ever
embraced that which is beyond being; the soul must seek it still:
the sphere of the universe, by its possession of the soul thus
aspirant, is moved to the aspiration which falls within its own
nature; this is no more than such power as body may have, the
mode of pursuit possible where the object pursued is debarred
from entrance; it is the motion of coiling about, with ceaseless
return upon the same path- in other words, it is circuit.
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